Our longest war is waged here at home

Published: Monday, March 3, 2014 at 4:30 a.m.

Last Modified: Friday, February 28, 2014 at 2:44 p.m.

Confession time: The biggest reason I became a registered nurse was to qualify myself to work in substance abuse nursing.

My intense interest in drug addiction goes back to 1956 when at age 7 I saw my first set of “works.” Many members of my family were addicts or alcoholics and, well, you just never knew when they were going to turn mean. The best strategy was to lie low and try to stay out of everyone’s way.

Why the gory visit to a past that most people in my shoes would just as soon forget? Frankly, it’s because I’d like to talk about a problem that is affecting more and more ordinary, good people than most of us can possibly imagine: the skyrocketing abuse of prescription painkillers.

As a child, I lived in what I’ve come to think of as the hell that has no doors, a dark, twilight world where a child has no control over the horror all around her.

Every day, children from one end of America to the other, and right here in Henderson County, are suffering a lot more than I did, for much the same reasons. Their parents are addicted to drugs and alcohol, and much of the world around them has largely given up trying to fight the war that affects more Americans than any war, anywhere: the war on drugs.

Ask any law enforcement officer you know anywhere in America. The biggest industry in America, or in the world for that matter, is the illegal drug trade.

The Feb. 23 Times-News ran a front page article, “A Changing Battlefield.” It discussed the latest bad news in the war on drugs — prescription pain pills — and the burgeoning black market that feeds the rising demand for painkillers so powerful and addictive that patients legally prescribed these drugs often become addicted in a few short weeks.

These pills, which include OxyContin, Vicodin, Percocet, acetyl fentanyl, just to name a few, have come into use by more and more addicts who were first prescribed these powerful drugs legally as part of a treatment care plan after a serious injury or during a painful illness.

Again, the problem with these drugs is they are so addictive that many who are legally prescribed them for short-term pain relief find themselves addicted quickly, and before their need for pain medication is past. By the time the pain does go away, they are saddled with an addiction.

Unfortunately, drug addiction is a long, drawn out process, made infinitely tougher to treat because of denial on the part of the patients and their family members. Usually, by the time addiction is obvious, the addict is deep into the addiction, and it is much harder to treat.

The worst part of this whole scenario is the cost of treatment. Insurance companies have all but eliminated treatment for substance abuse. Hopefully that will change under the Affordable Care Act.

That leaves state-funded substance abuse treatment programs to fill in the gaps. In our area, we have four detox units: PATHS at Pardee Hospital, Copestone at Mission Hospital, Neil Dobbins in Asheville and ADATC in Black Mountain.

The biggest problem with our current system to help addicts and alcoholics is the gap between detox and rehab. Heavy budget cuts in the past decade have forced some treatment centers to send the addict or alcoholic home between detox and rehab to wait up to a month for a bed to open up in rehab. During that time, the addict’s or alcoholic’s job is to stay sober so he can get into rehab to get sober.

Did you catch that one?

It’s kind of like telling a cancer patient, after he’s gotten a diagnosis, to go home and drink carrot juice and cure himself so he can go to a cancer treatment center to treat the cancer.

If an addict or an alcoholic could stay sober for a month outside of treatment, he wouldn’t need treatment. Granted, there are some who manage to do so. But this way of treating suffering addicts and alcoholics is vicious and cruel. It puts the failure to fix the problem on the patients because they can’t cure themselves in order to get help.

Cut the budget so much that there are no beds straight out of detox, then refuse to let the addicts or alcoholics into rehab when they show up with drugs or alcohol in them, still suffering from the same disease they needed help for in the first place.

The bitter irony to this scenario is that the lawmakers who dream up this kind of care rationing and call it “streamlining health care costs” are usually wealthy enough to afford the best treatment options for their own family members. They are not suffering from the legislation they pass on others.

It’s not just teachers’ jobs, pensions and Head Start programs that our legislature has cut. The list of cuts has affected the lives of every working class citizen in ways we don’t even realize, until the person affected is us or someone we love.

<p>Confession time: The biggest reason I became a registered nurse was to qualify myself to work in substance abuse nursing.</p><p>My intense interest in drug addiction goes back to 1956 when at age 7 I saw my first set of “works.” Many members of my family were addicts or alcoholics and, well, you just never knew when they were going to turn mean. The best strategy was to lie low and try to stay out of everyone's way.</p><p>Why the gory visit to a past that most people in my shoes would just as soon forget? Frankly, it's because I'd like to talk about a problem that is affecting more and more ordinary, good people than most of us can possibly imagine: the skyrocketing abuse of prescription painkillers.</p><p>As a child, I lived in what I've come to think of as the hell that has no doors, a dark, twilight world where a child has no control over the horror all around her.</p><p>Every day, children from one end of America to the other, and right here in Henderson County, are suffering a lot more than I did, for much the same reasons. Their parents are addicted to drugs and alcohol, and much of the world around them has largely given up trying to fight the war that affects more Americans than any war, anywhere: the war on drugs.</p><p>Ask any law enforcement officer you know anywhere in America. The biggest industry in America, or in the world for that matter, is the illegal drug trade.</p><p>The Feb. 23 Times-News ran a front page article, “A Changing Battlefield.” It discussed the latest bad news in the war on drugs — prescription pain pills — and the burgeoning black market that feeds the rising demand for painkillers so powerful and addictive that patients legally prescribed these drugs often become addicted in a few short weeks.</p><p>These pills, which include OxyContin, Vicodin, Percocet, acetyl fentanyl, just to name a few, have come into use by more and more addicts who were first prescribed these powerful drugs legally as part of a treatment care plan after a serious injury or during a painful illness.</p><p>Again, the problem with these drugs is they are so addictive that many who are legally prescribed them for short-term pain relief find themselves addicted quickly, and before their need for pain medication is past. By the time the pain does go away, they are saddled with an addiction.</p><p>Unfortunately, drug addiction is a long, drawn out process, made infinitely tougher to treat because of denial on the part of the patients and their family members. Usually, by the time addiction is obvious, the addict is deep into the addiction, and it is much harder to treat.</p><p>The worst part of this whole scenario is the cost of treatment. Insurance companies have all but eliminated treatment for substance abuse. Hopefully that will change under the Affordable Care Act.</p><p>That leaves state-funded substance abuse treatment programs to fill in the gaps. In our area, we have four detox units: PATHS at Pardee Hospital, Copestone at Mission Hospital, Neil Dobbins in Asheville and ADATC in Black Mountain.</p><p>The biggest problem with our current system to help addicts and alcoholics is the gap between detox and rehab. Heavy budget cuts in the past decade have forced some treatment centers to send the addict or alcoholic home between detox and rehab to wait up to a month for a bed to open up in rehab. During that time, the addict's or alcoholic's job is to stay sober so he can get into rehab to get sober.</p><p>Did you catch that one?</p><p>It's kind of like telling a cancer patient, after he's gotten a diagnosis, to go home and drink carrot juice and cure himself so he can go to a cancer treatment center to treat the cancer.</p><p>If an addict or an alcoholic could stay sober for a month outside of treatment, he wouldn't need treatment. Granted, there are some who manage to do so. But this way of treating suffering addicts and alcoholics is vicious and cruel. It puts the failure to fix the problem on the patients because they can't cure themselves in order to get help.</p><p>Cut the budget so much that there are no beds straight out of detox, then refuse to let the addicts or alcoholics into rehab when they show up with drugs or alcohol in them, still suffering from the same disease they needed help for in the first place.</p><p>The bitter irony to this scenario is that the lawmakers who dream up this kind of care rationing and call it “streamlining health care costs” are usually wealthy enough to afford the best treatment options for their own family members. They are not suffering from the legislation they pass on others.</p><p>It's not just teachers' jobs, pensions and Head Start programs that our legislature has cut. The list of cuts has affected the lives of every working class citizen in ways we don't even realize, until the person affected is us or someone we love.</p><p>Remember that the next time you vote.</p>